"Tomorrow We Should Do More" and Other Reasons Gun Rights Folk Mistrust President Obama

As Jacob Sullum has already pointed out today at Reason, most of the specifics of President Obama's lengthy and emotional announcement of various executive actions allegedly intended to curb gun violence, which he framed specifically as a reaction to a series of public mass-shooting tragedies, would have done nothing to prevent those tragedies.

Sullum has also pointed out that the combination of encouraging more mental health treatment along with tougher attempts to keep a class of people who seek that treatment from exercising their Second Amendment rights is likely to discourage people from seeking treatment.

With its core content irrelevant to its framed political purpose (about a political problem that the vast majority of the American people consider very low on their list of priorities), the rest of Obama's gun speech today nonetheless devolved into a political rally. He called for people to vote for politicians who will, like Obama, advocate for tougher access to guns, whether or not we have reason to believe doing so will deal with the problem of gun violence. That problem is not a growing epidemic but something that has shrunk in half in the past 23 years.

The parts of the speech about better gun safety technologies also obviously have nothing to do with all the tragic tales with which he buttressed the alleged purpose of the speech. Such technologies may well be a great thing for those that want them. If gun owners overwhelmingly want better computerized trigger locks, child safety devices and the like, and perhaps they do, they will eventually have them, if they are willing to pay for them.

But people who want guns for instant emergency self defense might not want a weapon only as easy to use instantly as a locked iPhone. People who can't afford high-tech gadgets might want access to a self-defense weapon that is not an expensive high-tech gadget.

And when this constitutional-law-professor-and-don't-you-forget-it president rhetorically deals with the issue of pre-emptively denying a core constitutional right to people based on pure government suspicion by merely saying that "that's not right…that can't be right" that the government should be denied this power when it comes to terror suspects buying guns, he's arguing from a position of pure desire to accrue more raw power to the government.

Obama also made calls for more (government-funded) research into gun violence, while at the same time showing exactly why those who respect gun rights are skeptical of such research: it is often incredibly shoddy and tendentious and used to back political proposals to restrict gun access that the "research" doesn't actually support.

Both studies are discussed in my February Reason feature "You Know Less Than You Think About Guns," and neither conclusion is proven true. When politicians use research to make untrue claims to back up their call for tougher legal access to guns, those who respect gun rights understandably don't trust them.

They also don't trust it when politicians like Obama make it clear their political target is not people killing people with guns, but rather people having guns. His whole quasi-sophisticated "rights balancing" talk about how our freedom of religion and freedom to assemble are harmed by people who wander into churches and gatherings and kill people with guns makes this clear.

Because the government has already made it illegal to do such things. There do not need to be more laws making it clear that such behavior isn't tolerated in our constitutional republic. What Obama wants to do is make it harder for more people to get guns, a whole different matter, as the vast, vast majority of the people affected by such laws will not use them to "violate freedom of religion" by shooting up a church.

But the key giveaway, the reason why this gun issue that seems so common sense to Obama and his fans is so politically contentious, is because Obama makes it very clear (though perhaps inadvertently) that in a game of positing gun violence as always, in whatever amount, so unacceptable it demands more laws, and then positing laws that will likely have almost no independent effect on gun violence, that the game of ratcheting gun laws more and more has no foreseeable end.

Obama kept nodding to how hard it is to stop gun violence, or maybe to pass gun laws, it was unclear which, though admittedly both are hard (and they are not the same thing). And he concluded: "tomorrow we should do more, and do more the day after that."

President Obama, that attitude is exactly why the politics of gun control—sorry, "common sense gun safety"— is so hard. Because we see you are seeking a goal that is unreachable in a world where guns and the legal right to own them still exists, and you want to do "more" and "more" to reach that goal.

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What shitstains like Obama don’t realize is the gun “lock” is the deadbolt on my front door, the locks on my car doors and the snap keeping my gun strapped inside my holster. Once somebody breaks through one of those “locks”, (or in the case of the holster, once I’ve been forced to unsnap it, then they have violated the sanctity of my private property to the point that they are subject to being shot in self defense.

I wish you were exaggerating, but that’s literally the law in Canada – self-defense is not a valid reason for handgun licence.

There are a few purposes for which individuals can be licensed to acquire or possess a restricted firearm, the most common being target practice or target shooting competitions, or as part of a collection.

In limited circumstances, restricted firearms are also allowed for use in connection with one’s lawful profession or occupation, or to protect life.

My wife and I were talking about gun locks last night; we recently had a child and will, very soon, have to deal with him being mobile, curious, etc. We want to keep him safe, but we also don’t want to prevent ourselves from using a tool when it is needed. We came to the conclusion that our best bet was education.

From a parent- you can’t educate a 1-year old not grab something that’s sitting out. They grab everything. Education is fine when the kid is older, but when they’re little, make certain the gun is not accessible.

I’m in a similar situation. I was raised around guns, as was my wife, so we have a little bit of experience from the child’s end. In any case, we agree that teaching proper gun safety from as early as possible (never touch a gun without an adult’s permission, never point a gun at someone you’re not going to shoot, all guns are loaded unless you’ve personally cleared the action, etc.) is the best bet, but in the meantime just keeping guns out of reach is a pretty easy win. Once my daughter’s old enough to climb on a chair to reach something she’ll also be old enough to learn about guns.

This, ours is completely out of reach from our eldest (and unloaded) while still being quickly accessible by the parents. By the time he is remotely close to being able to figure out the logistics of getting to that object he doesn’t even know about he will also be old enough to be taught correct handling, safety and not to ever touch it on his own.

Your best bet is probably to just buy a high quality gun safe that you can get into quickly if necessary but that your kid can’t open. You’re not going to be able to educate a little kid about guns…they’ll pick up just about anything just because they’re kids.

Don’t they have pretty cheap gun safes that can be activated by thumbprint now? This would seem to give you quick access to the weapon while you need it while preventing anyone else from getting a hold of it.

Keeping it unloaded and out of reach was what I first did when my child was born 7 years ago.

I bought a safe last year. I live smack dab in the middle of a pretty safe subdivision in a very safe suburb, so I’ll take the trade off between less accessible in the case of emergency for more peace of mind.

Now that my daughter is 7, I’ll teach her the basics of marksmanship and gun safety with my BB gun, once the snow melts.

For that I would say that ‘smart guns’ are ready for prime time when the Secret Service purges its stock of dumb guns, and exclusively uses smart guns for Presidential Protection (I seriously doubt they would ever agree to that), and technology of the same reliability that is used for Presidential Protection adds negligible costs.

Their ideal is a bunch of disarmed sheeplike followers pulling the lever for them at every election and then doing as they’re told.

That is, roughly speaking, the state of the modern Democratic party. The Democratic party, today, is essentially composed of an poor, uneducated, class of kept clients overseen by a overeducated mandarinate that fancies itself intellectually superior.

As long as the clients remain loyal and don’t interfere with the internecine battles of mandarinate (and, of course, stay out of their neighborhoods, they’ll be provided panem et circenses.

So basically you support the Robert Heinlein model of citizenship (from the book “Starship Troopers”). I’ll admit that it does have a certain appeal and I’d love to see a politician try that as an epic troll.

I can barely believe that the Democrats are going into a presidential election promoting gun control and Syrian immigration. Do they not listen to their pollsters at all? I don’t get it. The Clinton administration learned its gun control lesson the hard way, and gun control is even less popular now.

And beyond the bleeding-heart liberals, the “let’s destroy white Christian America” sort, and the open borders types, there’s no real constituency in favor of Syrian refugees.

And then there’s Hillary’s idiocy about “all sexual assault victims should be believed.” That has got to be in the top 10 of own-goal statements by American politicians.

It is like he is some mole created to destroy the Democratic Party. Gun control has always been a political loser and it is if anything a bigger loser issue now than it was 16 years ago when it was costing Al Gore the Presidency.

Trump could help Hilary get the White House though and Dems running for senate could squeeze in just by virtue of the ticket – plus the possibility of appointing new Justices. However, I think the plan may be backfiring, he may have a real chance to beat her at this point.

That could mean several things. It could mean Trump is a Democratic mole, intending to throw the election. But I don’t see an egomaniac like Trump losing the biggest election in the world as a favor to a golfing buddy.

I think it’s very likely that Bill wants Hillary to lose. Some of the things he said in 2008 sure sounded like subtle sabotage. Why would he want to have her overshadow him? Plus, being the First Husband would put a crimp in his babe-chasing. And he’s got plenty of emotional reasons to want to take her down a peg.

Bill knows the minute he’s back in the White House, 1) the party’s over and he can’t go chasing tail for a while, and 2) he’d end up being expected to run the country again because no one really likes his wife outside of a gaggle of bitter cat ladies.

They won’t. What they will actually do once in power is another question. But regardless of what happens in the Presidential election, the Democrats are doomed in every other election except in a few dark blue states.

But sometimes they don’t. It was an article of religous faith around here that they would not take the Senate in 2014. The party line on Reason is that the Republicans will always lose any election no matter what. Since they do lose, that is sometimes right but not always

That’s what i was saying, what with the double negative. The Republicans seem to be trying to lose, but the Democrats may well be trying harder, and might end up doing a better job of losing this time around. Lord knows both sides deserve to lose.

Given that Rand Paul is the most Libertarian major party candidate, it speaks volumes about Reason that it has not really gotten behind him. Compare the number of Rand Paul articles compared to the massive onslaught of Trump articles over the last six months. Negative or not, Trump is getting sometimes multiple articles posted per day. I’m not sure if Rand gets one per week on average.

If this is the big Libertarian publication, it doesn’t give libertarians much hope.

I remember another president who was considered brilliant, principled, and an outsider, and who was disliked by the Washington, DC establishment. It was always said that being considered an outsider severely hampered his efforts to get much of anything done. That was Jimmy Carter.

Certainly, if the election is decided on gun rights, the Republicans will maintain control of the Senate,

Those Senate seats up for grabs seem to be mostly in flyover country.

Meanwhile, Republicans hold both houses in 31 state legislatures–which was already historically unusual. That number may be set to increase if gun control becomes the issue on which this election is decided.

If a Republican actually won the White House, the stage might be set to get a Constitutional amendment ratified to balance the federal budget or something else useful–like limit the power of public employee unions.

I’m beginning to think that, in the environment we have this year, he is almost the perfect candidate to beat her like a rented mule. He will not adhere to the pieties and indulgences that the Clintons have coasted on forever. He has shown that he is perfectly willing to call her husband a degenerate who abuses women, and to call her age and health into question. As a candidate, what he says cannot be ignored by the media, so it will be out there. And once it gets out there, she can’t deal with it worth a damn, because she is a terrible candidate who cannot think on her feet or get most people to give her the benefit of the doubt.

He would crush her. He knows how to play the media and so far has gotten away with saying shit that would end the career of any other GOP candidate ten times over. He also isn’t playing into that ‘nice guy’ crap that cost McCain and Romney their elections. They both ran bad campaigns. Trump is running a good one.

The DNC has never encountered someone like Trump as an opponent. Their consultant weasels have no idea how to stop him. Just like all the consultant weasels for the other GOP candidates have no idea how to stop them.

She’s a lefty. Lefties emote. They don’t resort to logic, reason, or concern themselves with consistency or principles. They emote. She sees the opportunity to resonate with women – she emotes. Somebody goes after her husband, she emotes and attacks them.

Hillary isn’t a real prog. She is a complete sociopath that uses progressivism to attain power. As is her husband. She has no real emotions, other than maybe rage when she does;t get what she feels she is owed. Which is everything. This is why she comes off as being so insincere. Because she is. She has zero conviction. If she could be empress for all eternity tomorrow by turning evangelical republican, she would do it.

Someone recently said (Ed Klein I think) that there are three major political parties i the US. Republicans, democrats, and Clintons. As there are not enough Clinton votes to get elected, they use the democrats as a vehicle for their power. I believe that.

“And then there’s Hillary’s idiocy about ‘all sexual assault victims should be believed.'”

Except for that one case when she, as a lawyer, got a rapist she claims she knew was guilty found innocent by repeatedly lying and attacking the character of the teenage victim. In that case the victim should not be believed, and the story, when told by Hillary to reporters, is hilarious and worthy of eliciting laughs from Hillary as she recounts that time she got a rapist found innocent.

I can barely believe that the Democrats are going into a presidential election promoting gun control and Syrian immigration.

Because they know it won’t matter. The Dems have a very big advantage in the Electoral College, and an even bigger advantage from the MSM. I am starting to believe that the Dems have a long term lock on the Presidency, while they will continue to lose every other office. This is actually good news, as a permanent Republican Congress might decide it’s time to limit the power of a permanent Democrat Executive.

The overtone window has moved steadily to the authoritarian left for decades. There is no incrementalism possible to libertarians unless progressives move the window for them. Libertarians are fellow travelers to progressives on social issues (or, used to be until progressives became fascists). Never does government get smaller – never.

“The game of ratcheting gun laws more and more has no foreseeable end”

Well, it ends for Obama when he is no longer in office, and it’s especially a good thing in Obama’s eyes that the damage he’s done to our legal gun rights probably won’t be undone.

It seems unlikely that the next President will reverse an executive order in his or her first term when doing so will open up that President to criticism the first time someone with a mental health issue kills someone else with a legally acquired gun.

The permanence of the damage Obama has done to our rights makes him the worst President we’ve had since before FDR. certainly can’t think of a better way to rank Presidents than the extent to which they’ve damaged our Constitutional rights.

Maybe I missed it but I have yet to hear anyone point out his deadpan, tearless delivery of his addresses after the paris attack and the SB attack or his joking around before his address after the Fort Hood attack.

So, in the same speech he said ‘tomorrow we should do more’ and ‘this is not a slippery slope’.

I see.

Mr. President – Fuck you. No.

*I leave aside the fact that these unconstitutional new ‘laws’ written and signed by the president actually change nothing. They will not affect the sale or transfer of guns one whit. The answer is still a resounding NO.

Obama doesn’t care about mass murders, he cares about the monopoly on violence. He thinks it’s important that the State be the only entity able to do violence. And from what I can tell, a significant subset of progressive fucks are smart enough to understand this. The whole “gun safety” nonsense feels remarkably cynical to me.

Obama cares about inflicting his personal will on the American people. He feels he’s justified in doing that for a number of reasons, including righting historical wrongs, but in addition to that, he also despises the American people for being racist and capitalist. He hates the American people for who we are, what we do, what we’ve done in the past, and what we want, and he sees himself as justified in inflicting his will on us because he hates us.

I would argue that joining the NRA is probably the worst way to fight for gun rights. Wayne LaPierre is basically the NRA version of John Boehner…he’s an abrasive asshole who comes off to those who don’t pay attention like he’s pro-gun rights, but the NRA under his leadership hasn’t put up much of a fight for gun rights anywhere. His method of “fighting” is “issue a sternly worded press release and do nothing further”.

The money that’s given to the NRA via membership dues doesn’t even go towards their political outreach.

I dislike Mr. Obama as much as most here. But, I think it helps to remember, he’s essentially just a front man. The modern left has essentially been conquered by the authoritarian progressives. He’s not spouting this bullshit to appeal to the country as a whole. He’s trying to appeal to what is the major base within the Democratic party.

This is why I tend to urge libertarians to look to work with the right (at least where we can without selling out on principle). The left is pretty much captive to the authoritarians.

Yeah, I understand where a lot of (especially older) libertarians might not tend to get it. For a long time, conservatives were happy to use state power to push traditional morality and social standards. Both progressives and libertarians were opposed. But, libertarians made the mistake of assuming that the progressives were like them in that they didn’t believe the government should be pushing morality or social standards. They weren’t. They were happy to have the government pushing these things. They just wanted their own morality and social standards to be the things being pushed.

Yup. The problem was never really about morality or social standards, no matter who was in charge…it was always about the willingness to use force to push them on other people. And that’s been a problem with both parties.

True. But, I tend to think the facts on the ground have changed such that now, it’s hard to argue that it’s still six of one, half a dozen of the other. Regardless of what some conservatives might want, the government isn’t going to be getting back into the “push traditional values and social standards” business. It is in and is only getting deeper in the “push progressive values and social standards” business. And the right seems to be picking up on the fact that they’ve lost the Kulturkampf. A lot of conservatives are no longer really even giving it all that much lip service. The proggies, on the other hand, only seem to be ramping up their authority boners.

I disagree. Look at the current slate of GOP candidates…every one of them polling in double digits is a social conservative running on some variation of “traditional values”. So are many of the Republicans who won in the states in 2014. So are many of the “Tea Party movement” Republicans (Thomas Massie, a favorite with libertarians, was strongly in favor of Kim Davis’ abuses of power).

As much as I hate it and wish that the GOP would stay out of social issues, that doesn’t seem to be the way they’re going.

Alberto Gonzales, Bush’s AG, was actually quite active in cracking down on legal porn. Not child porn or some weird fetish stuff…he sicced the DOJ on legal porn.

The left and the right have forced us to give money to corporations (insurance and car companies under Obama, insurance and banks under Bush). Neither has been a fan of due process when it gets in the way of what they want. I see both as threats.

That said, I did agree with Ted Cruz that literally every Republican candidate (including Trump) is more competent to be President than Hillary.

I’ve found that the contemporary definition for the term “common sense”, as employed in political debates, is basically a euphemism for “I’m too lazy or stupid to do any research so I’m going to make a fallacious appeal to perceived popularity”.

So basically whenever you hear someone make an appeal to “common sense” in a debate, the proper response is call them out on their ignorance and then to treat them like a fucking idiot. It won’t win them over, but then they’re not really interested in hearing facts or logic anyway and the angrier you make them, the more likely they are to actually do some research just to try and discredit you.

Yeah, “common sense policies on XYZ” are just a euphemism for “obviously I am right and only an evil moron could disagree with this.” It is purest noise.

The funniest thing is that “common sense” apparently changes all the time. In 1967 apparently nobody had any common sense because nobody was suggesting things like magazine size limits. Hell, in Britain up until 1964, there was no legal bar to a convicted felon owning a gun. I guess nobody had any common sense then. And in ten years, “common sense” will tell us something else that nobody is proposing now.

If it really was common sense, then there would be little to no discussion of changing or amending the laws or the Constitution, and no need for politicians to stump on common sense. After all, it’s common sense.

The reason gun rights advocates don’t believe these clowns is because they advocate policies that don’t make sense about a subject of which they’re totally ignorant without even knowing the status quo. And then they call it “common sense”.

Common sense is a basic ability to perceive, understand, and judge things, which is shared by (“common to”) nearly all people and can reasonably be expected of nearly all people without any need for debate.

(Wikipedia)

The existence of common sense itself is something that only an arrogant person incapable of recognizing their own ignorance would accept.

The purpose of all gun controls is reducing freedom, not crime. Otherwise liberals would admit that getting rid of gun-free zones is a good idea. But every little change shifts the Overton Window leftward a bit, bringing closer the day when they can finally prohibit ordinary citizens from owning guns and even confiscate them. (They’re already just one SCOTUS Injustice from eliminating our Second Amendment rights.)

I miss Bill Clinton: he made himself feel good by getting blow jobs from White House interns; sure, it was sleazy, but it was pretty harmless in the grand scheme of things. Obama, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to be able to get his jollies other than by passing useless progressive legislation and expanding the power of the executive branch.

Again Reason is being very pussy-footed with regards to this. Obama and the rest of the Dems want more gun control and any ratchet will help. If they could operate by executive action then they don’t need to worry about Congressional majorities or popularity since they supposedly have the White House “locked” for the time being.

Common sense,… How about guns are used in self-defense 1.9 million times per year. Contrast that with the 8000 murders committed with guns, 230 times as many violent crimes prevented. Not to mention the common sense that some of those 8000 are also legitimate self-defense. Reducing private ownership of guns WILL increase the number of innocent victims, common sense. But that doesn’t make headlines and doesn’t make Mr. Unprecedented more famous. Fuck the hell out of Obama and the circus act he rode in on.

Forget guns! I’m worried sick about golf! I don’t know anything about it, but i don’t see why you should be able to carry around 14 clubs in public! CLUBS for god’s sake! And i’m told you can buy them anywhere w/o a background check! COMPLETELY UNREGULATED! & why would you need a huge pocket on the bag full of balls? 2 or 3 should be plenty (in case you lose one). & i’m told alcohol is often involved as well. This looks like a tragedy in the making! ‘Just a matter of time. & they take these clubs to ranges. & to courses, both of which use an immense amount of land & precious water resources to maintain. & when they’re done, they’re out on public streets, all liquored up, with all those CLUBS that are allowed to be transported in an unsecured bag with all those balls in the same bag. Blatantly irresponsible! We need to close the loopholes! Limit the clubs to 1 driver, 1 iron, & 1 putter at a minimum. They can only buy 3 balls/month w/their fingerprint. We just need some common sense regulations!

Honestly, I was pleasantly surprised that this was all Obama had in his arsenal (pun intended). I think this leaves him with an empty chamber for the rest of his term (pun intended). Yeah, it will create government bloat without solving a damn thing; yeah, the mental health aspects are a little worrying. But what I really picked up from this is that the staffers he has dedicated to finding any possible way to get around that pesky Constitution weren’t able to find a single thing he could do that could actually restrict gun ownership on anyone who wasn’t already disallowed from owning a gun.

Yes. Obama, in his zeal has prematurely shot his wad on what was supposed to be a dry run. And now will be left with something of a mess on his hands. Puns intended, and many thanks to that Funke I’ve been hearing about.

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